Essay writing is a significant element for expressing oneself and an important indicator of linguistic competency and knowledge of an author. In particular, essays are considered by many researchers as the most useful tool to assess learning outcomes, implying the ability to recall, organize and integrate ideas, the ability to express oneself in writing and the ability to supply merely than identify interpretation and application of data. It is no wonder that essay writing has been an important subject in the educational system across cultures and throughout history. However, manual evaluation of essay writing faces several obstacles including the time and effort it takes to evaluate an essay and the inconsistency among human raters.
For example, one of the several obstacles of manually grading essays is represented by the perceived subjectivity of the grading process. The subjective nature of an essay assessment leads to variation in grades awarded by different human assessors, which is perceived by students as a great source of unfairness. This issue may be faced through the adoption of automated assessment tools for essays. A system for automated assessment would at least be consistent in the way it scores essays, and enormous cost and time savings could be achieved if the system can be shown to grade essays within the range of those awarded by human assessors. Therefore, the efficiency of a system for automated assessment holds a strong appeal to institutions of higher education.
Accordingly, there exists a need in the art to overcome the deficiencies and limitations described hereinabove.